Week 2 college football Five Factors box scores

This week’s Five Factors box scores are up! Check out all the results here. Week 2’s superior performances in each category are below. (By the way, I’ve fixed a couple of glitches to the Week 1 data, and I’ve added the post-game win expectancy figure here, too.)

Top 5 success rate margins (vs. FBS)

1. Boise State (+49.7% vs. UConn)
2. Ohio State (+48.0% vs. Rutgers)
3. Alabama (+45.5% vs. Arkansas State)
4. Wisconsin (+33.6% vs. New Mexico)
5. Mississippi State (+30.7% vs. Kansas State)

Boise State has been simply ridiculous so far. But I guess we’ll see what the Broncos are made of this coming week at Oklahoma State.

Top 5 field position margins (vs. FBS)

1. Iowa (+18.2 yards vs. Iowa State)
2. Kansas (+17.9 vs. CMU)
3. Michigan (+17.3 vs. WMU)
4. Vanderbilt (+16.5 vs. Nevada)
5. Kansas State (+15.6 vs. Mississippi State)

Kansas tilted the field in its first road win of the decade, and ... sheesh, how badly might Kansas State have lost without a huge field position advantage??

Top 5 points per scoring opportunity margins (vs. FBS)

1. Cincinnati (+5.3 vs. Miami-Ohio)
2. Alabama (+4.4 vs. Arkansas State)
3. Washington State (+3.9 vs. San Jose State)
4. Houston (+3.7 vs. Arizona)
5. Coastal Carolina (+3.6 vs. UAB)

What a strange game Arizona-Houston was. The Coogs jumped out to an enormous advantage, but by the end of the game, Arizona had created more scoring opportunities (nine to eight). Houston needed drastically better red zone execution to keep the scoring margin large.

Top 5 turnovers luck margins (vs. FBS)

1. Stanford (+3.6 vs. USC)
2. Kansas (+2.9 vs. CMU)
3. Army (+2.9 vs. Liberty)
4. Clemson (+2.6 vs. Texas A&M)
5. Navy (+2.5 vs. Memphis)

Translation: Clemson had a turnover margin that was +2.6 ahead of where national averages suggest it should have been. As each turnover is worth approximately five points, that means Texas A&M suffered about 13 points’ worth of bad turnovers luck in an upset bid that came up just two points short.

By the way, it wasn’t against an FBS team, so it didn’t go on this list, but after suffering some of the worst turnovers luck we’ve ever seen in the loss to Virginia Tech, Florida State led the nation with a plus-4.9 turnovers luck figure. Turnovers might have screwed the Noles against the Hokies, but they also saved the Noles against Samford.